People often ask about leg pain. The first question they usually ask is, "Is it Sciatica?" They are surprised that most of the time the answer is no.

There are several conditions that may cause leg pain. Some causes are generally harmless and some can be quite serious and even life threatening. The most common causes are:

Vertebral Subluxation: Your spine is an incredibly complex neurological and mechanical miracle. It has thousands of moving parts, such as bones, ligaments, muscles, nerves etc. The spine serves countless purposes, but to name the obvious: It serves to support our entire body in an upright position. It enables us to have flexibility, so we can bend and twist and dance. It balances that bowling ball on top of our shoulders. And perhaps most importantly, it creates outlets for our nerves to exit the spinal cord unobstructed so they may travel to major organs, muscles and extremities. This is where the leg pain comes in. When those nerves exiting the spine do become obstructed, usually by pressure excerted by spinal bones, they become 'pinched', subluxated and 'ANGRY.' So your body has this amazing alarm system in it that alerts you when something is wrong. Often times that alarm comes in the form of...

You got it! Leg pain.

Our team of doctors and therapists are specifically trained to detect and correct vertebral subluxations!

Tight Muscles/Muscle Spasm: That's right! For all these months you have had this nagging leg pain. It's limiting the way you work, play and even think. Every month it's getting worse, and now you feel tingling down your leg and you have begun to walk funny and it's getting worse, and it must be a tumor! OH MY GOODNESS!

Ok. Stop Right There. Relax. Take a deep breath. You just need a good stretch.

Our team of doctors and therapists are specifically trained to detect and correct muscle spasm and their effects!

Piriformis Sydrome: In order to understand piriformis syndrome, you should have a basic understanding of the surrounding anatomy. The piriformis is a muscle that lies deep beneath the gluteal muscles, (your buttocks). The large sciatic nerve passes through the belly of this muscle on its route to serve the lower extremities. The function of the piriformis muscle is primarily to produce external rotation of the hip joint. That occurrs when you want to point your toes away from your body to the extreme right and left of each hip respectively. Think of a duck walking. People with piriformis syndrome may notice that the foot of the effected leg flairs outward. Foot flair occurs because the pirifomis muscle is in extreme spasm. However, the most obvious symptom of piriformis syndrome is pain radiating down the leg. It may be sharp shooting pain, numbness, tingling, crawling etc. This occurs when the sciatic nerve is being choked off by the piriformis muscle that is in severe spasm. The pain is your body's way of telling you that something is very wrong!